Im simply going to state that I did my taxes this weekend. I’m not going to bother talking about how much I hate paying those taxes because I think we can all agree that paying taxes sucks.
The only nice thing is that there’s a refund on the way. As you know, if you could adjust your withholdings perfectly you would owe nothing and have no refund. Unfortunately, that is a virtual impossibility. So…Im getting a bit of a refund. And, please do not forget – tax refunds aren’t (usually) ‘free money’. It just means you handed over too much money to Uncle Sam and he’s returning it.
And what really annoys me is that there is someone, somewhere, who is thinking I’m not paying enough in taxes. You know, not paying my ‘fair share’. Keep in mind that I pay more in taxes, and use less government services, than the ‘victims of inequity’ who, literally, pay no taxes at all and use the most services. Their ‘fair share’ is zero? That doesn’t seem fair.
And then people like Fake Indian Woman want people to pay taxes on money that they haven’t actually gotten yet (unrealized gains), and even a percentage of your annual worth (wealth tax). But it’s okay because we all know that the government will manage that additional tax revenue wisely, frugally, and efficiently. Oh, and by the way the national debt is around $34 trillion dollars.
The more centrist-lefty minded will say something like “Don’t you like having a police and fire department? Don’t you like having roads to drive on? Don’t you like having infrastructure?” Why, yes…yes, I do. But Stuff like that makes up a tiny percentage of my taxes. The rest is stuff of questionable utility to me. It’s easy to jump on the government for the classic $900 toilet seats, but its more than that. I would say that .gov spend money like drunken sailors, but a) thats an unfair comparison to sailors everywhere and b) drunken sailors at least have the decency to spend their own money.
Whats the solution? Honestly, there isn’t one. Everyone is happy to tax someone as long as it isn’t them. “Free” health care, college education, housing, and that sort of ting isn’t ‘free’ by any stretch of the imagination. If you think it’s free then ask yourself how the teachers, doctors, and other people are getting paid. They don’t work for nothing, right?
“Oh, we’ll tax the rich!” Yeah, sure you will. Anyone remember when Clinton promised that he’d only raise taxes on ‘the rich’ and said that if you made less than $XXX,XXX per year your taxes wouldn’t change? And then what happened? Why, they lowered the dollar threshold lower and lower until all of a sudden almost everyone was considered ‘rich’…and then taxed ‘the rich’.
I’m trying not to be bitter, but I have enough business, accounting, and finance classes under my belt to know that there is a tremendously strong case for a) cash businesses and b) converting that cash to cash-like instruments (gold, silver, land, etc.)
And here’s a head scratcher….remember when the .gov was talking about a trillion dollar coin? If .gov can just mint a coin to give themselves a trillion dollars to beat a budget restriction, then why do they need to collect taxes at all? Why not just ‘print money’ like they already do? Don’t use the argument that doing so will cause inflation…no one seemed too worried about that when they were bandying the idea about.
I’ll leave you with what Will Rogers said about the difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.
There is a Congressman from Ohio that has proposed repealing the 16th amendment so the Federal Gummit can’t tax personal income.
While he is at it we need the 17th Amendment repealed as well. That took away the rights of the state’s to name their own representatives to Washington. Those people are members of the United States Senate. Both Amendments were passed during the Extreme Progressive Administration of Wooden Head Wilson.
The state governments lost their representation when the 17th Amendment was ratified. It’s been an uphill battle every since.
I wish that would happen, but too many people have an interest in keeping things the way they are…
It’s not that “you handed over too much money to Uncle Sam and he’s returning it.” You gave the government an interest-free loan.
I’ve worked out my finances such that I had to pay less than $20. I took a while to figure out how to play my withholding, but I’m getting better at it.
Since my wife and I began collecting our social Security a few years ago, we’ve had to pay every year. As we tinker with our w-4s it has gotten less each year and I think (which we all know is a dangerous habit) next year we’ll about break even.
Until WWII there was no withholding. You wrote the government a check at the end of the year when you filed your taxes. Can you imagine the uproar if people had to do that now?
And as long as Washington and our politicians continue to spend like drunken sailors on liberty, it won’t get any better. They can’t even bring themselves to get back to pre-pandemic spending levels. This madness can’t continue.
drunken sailors quit spending money when they run out of it. congress doesn’t. we need to find a new analogy.
Pawn shops and payday loans fix that. Ever been near a military base?
served 30 years.
Federal income taxes are used for social engineering and wealth redistribution to favored groups. We all volunteered for this communism when we requested a social security number and didn’t read the ‘fine print’.
We swapped our rights and traded them for privileges when we said we were citizens of the UNITED STATES corporation known as Washington D.C. and subject to the corporate rules that come with Maritime Law.
I don’t think it’s by accident that tax day (for most) is about as far away in the calendar from Election Day as you can get.